Part 5 - Summary and general estimate of Nyaya Epistemology

The Nyaya theory of knowledge discusses all the important problems of logic and the relevant problems of metaphysics. It formulates a realistic theory and tries to meet the idealist's objections against realism as a system of philosophy. According to it, knowledge is a quality of the soul, which manifests the objects of the world. All knowledge of objects, however, is not valid. For knowledge, to be valid means to be given (anubhava) in some way or other, and to have an assurance of ruth in it. The truth of knowledge consists in its correspondence to real facts and the test of truth lies in its pragmatic value and the coherence or 'consilience' of its different parts. It follows from this that memory and dream, doubt, error and hypothetical reasoning (tarka) cannot be regarded as valid knowledge, since they are either not given or not true cognitions of objects. These are, therefore, brought by the Naiyayikas under the class of non-valid knowledge which includes all cognitions which are either not given and truc, or are false. The falsity of knowledge is constituted by its non-correspondence to facts and is known through failure of the practical activities inspired by it. It follows that truth and falsity are not intrinsic to knowledge and that these are extrinsic characters determined by external conditions like correspondence and non-correspondence to reality respectively. So also, no knowledge is by itself known to be true or false. That is, truth or falsity is not self-evident in any knowledge, but must be evidenced by external conditions like the success or failure of practical activity. There are four kinds of valid knowledge and so four distinct and independent methods of knowledge. These are: perception, inference, comparison and testimony. While the old Naiyayikas define perception as an unerring cognition produced by sense-object contact, the moderns define it as immediate knowledge or as knowledge not brought about by any antecedent knowledge. There are five external senses and an internal sense called manas which is necessary to explain the 48-(O.P. 103)

perception of the soul and its states and processes. The individual soul is an eternal and all-pervading substance which is not essentially conscious, but has the quality of consciousness when it comes into relation with external objects through the senses. Corresponding to the six senses, there are six kinds of ordinary perceptions which give us direct knowledge of all perceptible objects including substances, their qualities and actions, universals, relations and the four kinds of non-existence. There are seven categories of reality, of which six stand for positive, and the last for negative facts. Of positive facts, substance, attribute and action are said to be existents, while generality, particularity and inherence are called subsistents. Non-existence is a negative but real fact and, according to the Naiyayika, there may be a direct perception of it along with that of the positive fact which it qualifies. Of ordinary perception, there are three modes, namely, the nirvikalpaka, the savikalpaka and pratyabhijna or recognition. These represent different stages in the development of our perceptual consciousness, but they are equally valid and refer to real contents of the objects of perception. In addition to ordinary perception, the modern Naiyayikas distinguish three kinds of extraordinary perception called samanyalaksana, jnanalaksana and yogaja. The first two are recognised by them as necessary to explain the perception of objects by senses which are not ordinarily competent to perceive them, and the last to explain the supernormal cognition of objects, which cannot be brought about by any sense. Inference is a type of syllogistic reasoning in which we pass from the apprehension of some mark or sign as related to an object, to something else, by virtue of a relation of invariable concomitance between the two. It is an argument in which some thinker asserts that a certain proposition is true because certain other propositions, which imply it, are asserted to be true. Thus inference is a combined deductiveinductive process which ensures both the validity of the reasoning employed and the truth of the conclusion reached. An

inference must have as its constituents three terms and at least three propositions. There are three conditions of valid inference, namely, vyapti or a universal relation between the middle and the major term, paksata or the assertion of the minor term, and lingaparamarsa or a synthetic view of the middle term as related to the major, on the one hand, and the minor, on the other. Vyapti is the logical ground on which the validity of inference depends. It is an inductive generalisation based ultimately on the direct perception of the universal in the particular. Paksata is the psychological ground which conditions the possibility of inference and is defined by the modern Naiyayikas as the absence of the condition in which there is certainty but no will to infer. Lingaparamarsa as the correlation of the major, middle and minor terms is useful for demonstrating the truth of the conclusion. These three steps, together with the initial statement of the object of inference and final conclusion, give us the five-membered form of the syllogism. Since inference is a combined deductive-inductive reasoning in the form of a categorical syllogism, we have not a classification of inferences into deductive and inductive, immediate and inediate, syllogistic and non-syllogistic, pure and mixed. Having regard to their purposes, or the nature of vyapti, or the nature of the induction on which it is based, inferences are classified into svartha and parartha, or into purvavat, sesavat and samanyatodrsta, or into kevalanvayi, kevala-vyalireki and anvaya-vyalireki. The fallacies of inference are all material fallacies which affect the truth of the propositions involved in inference. They ultimately arise out of a fallacious reason or middle term. There are six kinds of fallacious middle terms which violate one or other of the conditions of a valid middle term. A logically valid inference must be free from all kinds of fallacies. Comparison is the source of our knowledge of the denotation of a word on the basis of a given description of the objects denoted by it. Thus a man may be told: "A gavaya is an animal resembling the cow." If, on subsequently seeing a gavaya, he is able to give its name, we are to say that he

understands the denotation of the word through comparison. Comparison is of different kinds, according to the different terms in which the description may be given. It is true that comparison involves an element of perception and of testimony. The description comes to us as the statement of some authority and, as such, is a kind of verbal testimony. So also, we know by perception that certain objects possess the characters mentioned in the given description. Still comparison cannot be reduced to perception and testimony, because these will not explain the application of the name to the relevant objects, which is the essence of comparison. Nor can we explain it by inference, for when we know the denotation of a word from a given description, we do not reason syllogistically, but simply compare certain objects with a given description. To understand the denotation of a word in this way requires a selective activity of the mind, which is different from perception, inference and testimony. Therefore, comparison is a distinct method or source of knowledge. Testimony is the statement of an authoritative person, which serves to give us true knowledge about certain objects. It may come to us in the form of either spoken or written words and may relate to perceptible or imperceptible objects. In any case, there must be a significant combination of the words according to four conditions. They must imply one another and express compatible ideas. There must be adequate proximity among them, and they must convey the intention of the speaker or the writer who uses then. Testimony is the source of the greater part of a man's knowledge of the world. As the verbal know-. ledge of objects, it is distinct from all other kinds of knowledge. Perception, inference or comparison cannot take the place of testimony, although there may be in it an element of this or that other knowledge. It is true that testimony ultimately depends on perception or inference for its validity or for the proof of its validity. Again, there may sometimes be a conflict of authorities. Since, however, these difficulties are not peculiar to it, but rather common to all the sources of human know-

ledge, there is no reason why testimony should not be recognised as an independent method of knowledge like perception and inference. If in spite of the conflict of perceptions or of inferences, and the need of their mutual verification, we accept them as independent methods, we must accept testimony and comparison also as equally independent sources of knowledge. All other sources of valid knowledge including non-perception and postulation are brought by the Naiyayikas under perception, inference, comparison and testimony. Non-perception need not be admitted as a separate source of knowledge to explain our knowledge of non-existence, for it may be perceived by us as adjectival to the existent object which is its locus. So also, postulation may be reduced to vyatireki inference and need not be made a separate method of knowledge. For the Naiyayikas, then, there are four distinct and independent sources of knowledge. As a realistic theory of knowledge, based on the evidence of direct experience, the Nyaya epistemology has a strong appeal to our common sense. It has also a great value for the orientation of philosophical problems from the common-sense standpoint. But undue reliance on uncriticised experiences and common-sense has been the source of certain defects in the Nyaya theory. The Nyaya conception of knowledge as an adventitious quality of the soul substance is true neither to the nature of knowledge nor to that of the soul. To say that knowledge is a quality is to leave unexplained the fact of self-transcendence and ideal reference to objects, which is inherent in knowledge. As we have already observed, knowledge is the most fundainental fact of reality. The distinctions of substance and quality, subject and object, all fall within knowledge and are intelligibles only on the ground of knowledge. In this sense knowledge is the essence of the ultimate reality which we call the soul or the self. It does not require to be attached as a quality to any other reality, say matter or mind or soul. It is just the selfexpression of reality itself. If this be true, then we must give the Nyaya theory of the individual self as a substance which up

is not essentially conscious, but is accidentally qualified by consciousness when associated with a body. Such a view of the self is contradicted by the evidence of our introspective consciousness which reveals the self as a conscious subject and not as a thing with the quality of consciousness. Further, on this theory, the disembodied soul will have no consciousness and will, therefore, be indistinguishable from a material substance. So also, we must give up the idea of an ultimate dualism or opposition between subject and object, mind and matter. To the ordinary understanding, these appear to be two opposed substances which can hardly come into any relation with one another. The Naiyayika does not go far beyond this commonsense view when he treats the psychological distinction between knowledge and its object as the ground of an ultimate dualism between soul and matter as two realities. In truth, however, the distinction between subject and object, mind and matter is a relative distinction made within knowledge. So it presupposes the reality of a transcendent self which makes the distinction and is the ground of both the objective and subjective, the material and mental orders of existence. On the purely logical side also the Nyaya theory appears to be inadequate on some points. The view that truth is not self-evident in any knowledge, but requires in all cases to be evidenced by independent grounds, logically commits us to the fallacy of infinite regress. But, as we have already seen, the self is a selfevident reality which does not require and possibly cannot admit of any other proof, for every proof presupposes the reality of the self as concerned in the act of proving. Some Naiyayikas practically admit this when they say that the truth of self-consciousness (anuvyavasaya) is self-evident. So also, there seems to be no good ground for the Naiyayika's refusal to admit memory, non-perception and postulation as independent ways of knowing. But for memory, we cannot have any knowledge of the past. Memory cannot be explained as a reproduction of past experiences, due solely to the impressions left by them. We could not know certain states as impressions

or reproductions of past experiences, if we had not already known the past directly through memory. We may have a direct knowledge of the fact of non-existence, just as we have that of existent facts. But from this we should not conclude that this direct experience is as much a matter of sense perception in the one case as in the other. The truth of the matter is that while the existent is perceived, what is non-existent is not perceived, and that directly in both cases. Postulation is not the deduction of a conclusion from given premises, but the necessary supposition of a general principle as the only explanation of some given facts. For Kant the existence of God is a postulate of the moral life, not in the sense that it is deducible from certain ethical propositions, but in the sense that it is the only principle which can explain ethical propositions concerning the moral life. So we have to admit memory, non-perception and postulation as three distinct ways of knowing in addition to the four recognised by the Naiyayika. Nothing that has been said above by way of criticism should give one the impression that the Nyaya epistemology has no value. Such an impression would be entirely wrong. In fact, the contribution of the Nyaya theory of knowledge is not really inferior to that of any other theory, Indian or Western. The method of logical analysis employed by the Nyaya in the study of the problems of logic and metaphysics is a valuable asset for any system of philosophy. The charge is often heard against Indian philosophy that its theories are not based on logical reasoning but on religious authority and, therefore, they are dogmatic, rather than critical. The Nyaya philosophy is a standing repudiation of this charge. The theory of knowledge, formulated by the Nyaya, is made the basis not only of the Nyaya-Vaisesika, but also of other Indian systems, with slight modifications. The Nyaya applies the method of logical criticism to solve the problems of life and reality. It is by means of a sound logic that it tries to ascertain the truth and defend it against hostile criticism. Many of the contributions of this logic are of great

value even at the present day. The realistic logic, or more generally, epistemology of the Nyaya will not suffer by comparison with the modern realistic theories of the West.